It is not a little remarkable that the question of Church authority
should have existed for three hundred years, and be yet entirely
unsettled; in fact, the confusion relating to it does but increase.
I speak of it as an unsettled question, meaning thereby, not that
it is one which really admits of doubt, but as being one to which
those who called it in question have not themselves given any very
decided or uniform answer; there is, in fact, every variety of
opinion among them relating to it; some of them act almost upon the
Catholic principle, others despise it altogether. All this shows
that the principles of the Reformation are but very little known;
men talk of acting upon them-but what are they? Who, among the
Reformed at least, can tell what they are? That they are in some
way connected with" private judgment" in distinction from the
authority of the Church is plain enough; but with regard to the
extent to which private judgment is allowable, the Reformed are by
no means agreed; how far, for instance, they are bound to accept
the conclusions of the Heformers, or to assent to articles drawn up
by the private judgment of others; or how the accepting them at all
is consistent with the right of private judgment, or whether
private judgment may be exercised in determining what is Scripture,
as well as what is in Scripture, &c. What, then, is the
principle of the Reformation, and what is its character? Penny is a
convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism and explains why he made
this move. "Speaking of the great divisions of opinion which
subsist in the English Church, a writer in the British Critic
remarks, that" it is a matter of active question at the present
time within our Church, whether or not a Judgment impends over each
one of us, strictly and literally according to our works; whether
the good works of a Christian be 'filthy rags, ' or endued with a
quality of inherent righteousness; whether the sins of ordinary
life be forgiven with greater facility under the Gospel than under
other forms of religion, or whether the increased facility of such
forgiveness, be the principal good tidings which the Gospel has
brought; whether personal assurance of salvation be in ordinary
cases a divine promise or a diabolical illusion; whether private
study of scripture, with careful abstinence from reference to other
authority, be the means by which it is promised that the Spirit
shall lead us to the truth, or by which it is to be feared, (if we
have the opportunity of knowing better) that the devil will lead us
from the truth; whether the Church be or be not an appointed medium
between the soul and God; whether the type of Antichrist is to be
principally looked for among foreign Protestants or Catholics, and
other similar matters."" How much more difference exist in the
Anglican Communion today than existed a century ago. And so who is
right and who is wrong? He cites an Article of the Church of
England: "The Church comes before us as "the witness and keeper of
Holy Writ,"" He then proceeds: "The Catholic Church claims to
furnish us with a key, so that by the use of it all necessary
doctrine shall, under ordinary circumstances, be so plain that" he
who runs may read." It does not leave us to our own private
interpretation of it, or to that of any private individual
whatever, however highly gifted or learned; it sets before us
doctrine which has a much higher, and, in fact, a claim differing
in kind from that which any other doctrine has upon our acceptance.
The Catholic Church does not say: "What we teach you has been
deduced from Scripture by the private judgment of able men in our
communion, though it is in Scripture;" Catholic truth, though
Scriptural, is older than the Scripture, and therefore it would be
contradictory to say that it is derived from Scripture." One easily
sees that Jesus Christ founded a Church to teach us the truth.
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